Thora Birch has signed on to star in the independent movie Deadline; also joining them on cast will be Tammy Blanchard. The movie is about a screenwriter played by Murphy who travels to an abandoned house to write a screenplay. When she hits writer’s block and some unexpected events she has a psychological breakdown. At this time it’s not known what kind of role Birch will play.

It’s quite short notice though seeing shooting for the movie will start on Wednesday, so it seems they had some casting problems until the end. As for what this means for her career, it never really hurts to star in independent features though it’s hard to make a good thriller.

Mischa Barton, Thora Birch, Kaley Cuoco, Elisha Cuthbert, Kirsten Dunst, Scarlett Johansson, Keira Knightley, Lindsay Lohan, Jena Malone, Mandy Moore, Hayden Panettiere, Natalie Portman, Brittany Snow and Michelle Trachtenberg. Those are the names linked on starletlinks.com that are proven to be smokers. This means that of the names linked on the site in the age category over 16, 35% smokes. This is higher than the average in the normal population, the normal number for women in the United States is 22%.

Some things I have to say before going further into this is that these are the people that are proven to smoke. There might be others that do a very good job of hiding it. And of course I also don’t know how much these people smoke, they could be social smokers. But one thing is certain, they do smoke. Personally I think it’s a horrible habit; though I have personal reasons for that. But I don’t think any less of people that do smoke.

But why is the percentage of smokers so high in Hollywood? And why do they start so young? I think there are multiple reasons, I remember an interview with Shannon Doherty, she’s way past the starlet age but it does show a point. She once had to smoke in a role; she liked it so she kept doing it. I don’t know how often this happens but it shows it does happen.

At first she denied it but these days she can be spotted holding a cigarette quite frequently.
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How often do you hear that the new generation of celebrities has to thank their career to a family member; a dad, mom or sibling that got them their job? Is it really that simple to start a career in Hollywood? Why would a hack without any talent be able to start a successful career?

If you check industry websites quite regularly you encounter a lot of articles about Hannah Montana, currently the biggest show on the Disney Channel. Most of these articles introduce Miley Cyrus, the star of the show, as the daughter of country-singer Billy Ray Cyrus (the Achey, Breaky Heart guy). Of course you can’t get around this fact but there are also articles that suggest she got started in the business because of her father, that his name helped her. Even though the producers knew who they were casting I don’t think it mattered to them that Miley’s dad is famous, he still had to audition for the part of her father.

Hannah Montana is the top rated cable show in the tween market; show me one tween that watches the show because of Billy Ray Cyrus or that even really knew who he was before the show? I doubt you’ll find any. Not to mention that the soundtrack for Hannah Montana featuring eight songs by Miley easily outsold her father’s album that was released the same year. If anything; it’s Billy Ray Cyrus that’s benefiting from a new younger audience. If it weren’t for his part on his daughter’s show he probably wouldn’t be in the public eye as much right now. To the viewers of the show Miley isn’t Billy-Ray’s daughter, but he’s Miley’s father.

Billy Ray Cyrus’ daughter and Haley Joel Osment’s sister on Hannah Montana

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You would think that in this day of age with all its technology that the younger generations of celebrities would go with the trend of everything being interactive. But apparently this isn’t the case; taking a look at the average official celebrity website tells the whole story.

Taking a look at the links list on starletlinks.com already tells you one thing; a lot of young celebrities don’t even have an official website. And I’m not counting myspace pages because for me those don’t really count, it’s rather effortless to set up one of those.

Taking a browse through the pages that are linked get from bad to worse. Take llrocks.com for example; Lindsay Lohan’s official website. To start of with you get a small intro with a single from her newest single from the album Speak. Call me crazy but I could have sworn her last album released was called a Little More Personal. When you go further into the site it doesn’t get any better, the last update is from November 27th 2005. The design in general is very outdated and the info on the site is of course outdated as well. And leaving the journal section online is just pitiful, seeing the last entry is from October 15th 2003. It just shows that Lindsay and her management don’t seem to care about their online presence. So there was an effort at one point but there just isn’t any anymore.

New single? Maybe two years ago.

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